'Blest if I believe such a Poll Parrot as you was ever learned to speak!'
-Roger Riderhood

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Jewish Expulsions

I want to link to a very well researched post about a subject that has interested me for some time- the fate of the Jewish populations of Muslim countries after the establishment of the State of Israel.

For those who don't know this, the number of Jews who were expelled from mideastern and north African countries, often in very hostile circumstances, was roughly the same as the number of Palestinians who lost their homes in Israel. We hear over and over again about an alleged "right of return" for those Palestinians and their descendants, but of course we all know that the notion of a right of return of Jews to Iraq or Syria or Libya or Yemen, where they would be subjected to merciless persecution, is ludicrous.

The Israelis took these people in, and their descendants are now fully integrated in Israeli life. If you have travelled in the middle east, you know that many Palestinians too have built new lives, but far too many languish in the most squalid of conditions, having received no assistance whatever from their fellow Arabs. If the question of what Israel must do to make these people whole is vital, I want to hear equal attention devoted to the issue of what Muslim countries could ever be expected to do to heal the damage they did to their minority populations.

I'm glad, Poll, to see you distinguish between the rulers and the ruled. As with our aggression against Iraq, it suited the rulers' interests, and harmed just about everyone else. This is a tough issue- on some level we want to believe that people are responsible for the actions of their government, but, for example, how much could the people of Zimbabwe do about the actions of Mugabe?